


Make Joy Your Armor

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [50]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Injury, Dead People, Fantasy, Gen, Magic, Medieval, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Orphans, Parent Death, Short, Siblings, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Twins, Werewolves, Wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25764364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: The sound of footsteps, running. One set: wolf. The other: human, and unfamiliar.***Two orphaned werewolf cubs travel eastward to the land of their magician father.
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [50]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Kudos: 2





	Make Joy Your Armor

**Author's Note:**

> The childhood of everyone's favorite trans werewolf, Jeunesse Belrose. Heed the tags and enjoy!
> 
>  **SUGGESTED REREADING:** Any of the [Jeunesse stories.](https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Jeunesse%20Belrose*s*the%20Leech%20Collector*s*the%20Wolf-woman/works)
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

**I.**

Jeunesse hadn't expected any beauty in death. Certainly not for anyone in their little pack of wolves, including her mother, who bled out now into the snow at Jeunesse's feet. Red speckles trailed from her mother’s body—her corpse—across the clearing and downhill. A crossbow bolt stood erect in her back, piercing her parka, her skin, the muscle beneath.

No beauty there, but—dignity? 

Yes. Jeunesse had expected dignity in her mother’s death. 

She examined the leather satchel that lie a few feet away. It had a hole in it, and the contents inside—yellowed documents and a single booklet—were wet and illegible. The booklet, too, had a bolt-sized hole in the middle.

Mother had spoken so often of the beauty and dignity of things. The richness of pine-scent. The intricacy of feathers. She loved to know. She loved to experience. Even in winter, the bright fullness of the holly in the Zerizian Mountains had delighted Mireille Belrose into song. 

Saints and spirits, Mother had a song about everything. Aspen trees, bear claws, shearing sheep. How she’d trilled like a sparrow when she discovered Jeunesse was a girl, back when Jeunesse was only...

Well, the Zerizian Mountains outlived Mother. Only Jeunesse remained now, and her twin brother Samuel, both fourteen years old and alone.

**II.**

The soil, as solid and unrelenting as teeth, had hardened in the cold. They buried Mother as far as they could beneath the snow instead. Samuel wept until he had begun dry heaving.

"I don't understand," he keened as they sorted through her belongings. With rations and tinder between his fingers he looked at Jeunesse with a pleading expression, as if she could unfurl time. "I don't understand how this could've happened."

Jeunesse forced him to leave the damp remains of their mother’s papers. Knowledge hadn’t protected Mother. Understanding hadn’t saved her.

**III.**

When their hands numbed they took shelter in a cavern and sat curled against the fire, their mother’s woolen blankets around them. Samuel’s voice had drifted into a hurt, sniveling quiet, and yet still he chanted, “I don’t understand, Jeunesse, I don’t understand—”

“Samuel. The first time she was shot—back in Sovereignty lands—that weakened her already. Made her sick. Poisoned her blood and all that.”

“That was years ago—”

Years ago, and though Mother had removed the injured arm to spare her body, it hadn’t quite worked the way she’d hoped.

Jeunesse continued, “This one was through the chest, Samuel. You understand now?”

"How are you keeping your voice so steady? Don’t you miss her?" her twin asked.

The lessons their mother taught them so rarely impressed themselves upon Samuel. _You mustn’t weep,_ she’d always told them in a sing-song voice. _You mustn’t let your pulse race! You must make joy your armor, cubs, even as you shift shape!_

“What,” Samuel continued, “what, can’t you answer me? You’re my twin. You’re the only thing I have, we’re the last werewolves, we’re—”

Jeunesse reached over without ceremony and held her brother’s jaw between her pointer finger and her thumb. Her twin's eyes flashed their whites as he stared at her, and then, submissively, he looked away. Of the litter he had been the smaller of the two, his health poor until they reached almost decade of age. 

She had to take charge now if she wanted to maintain the pack, as Mother would have wanted.

“I won’t say I’m sorry, if that’s what you’re looking for,” Samuel whispered harshly.

“I miss her too. As much as you do. But now is not the time for grief.”

“Then when?” Samuel pleaded. Jeunesse tucked her arms around his shoulders and her head into his neck.

**IV.**

In the night, boyish weeping.

“I’m frightened out of my mind, Jeunesse.”

“I know. But our pack—”

“The only pack alive. Do you think we should find our father? The magician? In the east? Those papers Mother had...”

“No. He’s...just a man. We’ll find no peace there.”

**V.**

As morning light entered the cave, Jeunesse awoke with a sense of exasperation so heavy she could feel it sitting upon her chest. She lay sprawled on the blanket, refusing to open her eyes. Even in death, it seemed, Mother’s mistakes kept a heel firmly in Jeunesse’s thoughts.

Rifling through archives and libraries. Stealing books of obscure history. Chasing after mages, priests, scholars, philosophers. Roaming, roaming, and dragging the cubs along with her. All in the name of their people, and their people’s origins. No wonder she had gotten shot—twice. What other fate for a thieving, trespassing creature?

Ah, but the songs...and her Mother’s devotion to them, the last of the werewolves. _Joy as your armor, cubs! Joy as your armor!_

Jeunesse sniffled and rubbed her eyes, suddenly sore all over. Despite everything she still wanted Mother’s warm skin, her soft fur.

When she looked to her left, she found that she was alone in the cavern.

**VI.**

To track him was simple: her brother smelled of sweat and dog and salt, all of which stood out in the mountains. Jeunesse tailed Samuel for a few miles before she caught up to him trudging through the snow by his lonesome with a sack of rations dragging at his side. The pines dwarfed him with their shadows; he seemed as small as a vole.

She hung back as they trekked onward. He didn’t notice.

Samuel’s intensity—the way he felt so strongly—had always worried and confused her, and even angered her at the worst of times. He didn’t ever think, tossing himself into danger at every opportunity.

They were moving east, towards Tower Country. The people there, the magicians there, were so fierce that the both sun and moon feared them, and the land slept under perpetual dusk. Her mother had said that, and Mother rarely exaggerated, always seeking the truth of the matter…

As did Samuel.

 _He’s searching,_ Jeunesse told herself, _for anything he can find about the werewolves. For our father. Damn him._

She considered leaving Samuel behind, leaving him to his fool’s errand, but couldn’t. Above all, she had a duty to her pack. To him.

Above, birdsong rang out. Jeunesse tried to delight in it.

****

****

**VII.**

_A wolf goes unseen!_ Mother had sung. _Not princes, not paupers, not kings nor queens...will find a wolf that goes unseen! We move, cubs, and are unnoticed._

As Jeunesse followed Samuel, as days and miles passed, not a single breathing thing thought twice about the disheveled human-like children traveling alone into Tower Country…

Or so it seemed. No one stopped them, at least. Corn-farmers and traveling minstrels and mercenary bands failed to share any concerned glances. Jeunesse attributed it to the quiet step—the way their people navigated the world without leaving much of a trace. It had worked for Mother for years, until, of course, it didn’t. Twice.

Nightly, Jeunesse fell asleep facing the sky. Time flowed as normal in Tower Country, as it turned out, and the moon would grow full soon. In their wolf-shapes they would be forced to walk on fours, and as half-grown cubs they looked like stray dogs. Unassuming. She couldn’t comprehend what Samuel meant to do, because he certainly couldn’t force his way through whatever palatial estate their father the magician lorded over. The quiet step would only take him so far.

She could almost hear Samuel in her mind: _He must know he has children, somewhere. He’s our father. He must know it in his heart. If I just walk in, I’m sure I can…_

Etcetera, etcetera. Rubbish.

Their father was wholly unaware of them—Jeunesse would have bet on that fact. It was not uncommon, Mother had explained, for their people to use a human sire or dam to create cubs. Their numbers had dwindled so low in her time that all the wolf-men and wolf-women shared blood, and outsiders were needed for healthy children.

More rubbish.

Jeunesse didn’t want to give anyone cubs. When she thought of her old age she thought of a cabin and a lake and a fishing pole. She thought of solitude.

But then she’d worry about Samuel.

**VIII.**

After a few dozen miles, Jeunesse approached the edge of a ragged cliffside. Below her, in a deep, wet valley, a tower pierced the earth and sky like a needle. By far—by hundreds of feet, it seemed—it was the tallest thing among the cityscape around it. Even in the dark, the tower’s blue clay glowed cerulean, intense like the skin of a slithering, poisonous creature.

Tower Country. And something about this tower pricked her with familiarity…

Movement stirred below. She saw it easily with her wolf-eyes. Armed humans around the tower. Then a garden, a maze of hedges. Then more armed humans, alert in the night. Charged rods hung at their sides, two to every guard—one crackling with cold energy, one with flame, as if they had each harnessed the essence of the moon and sun.

What were those rods called? The word _verge_ came to mind. Like staffs. Magical staffs. 

She smelled Samuel on the wind, carried up from the valley. Of course.

Jeunesse could go no further. She could do nothing more for her brother. Distantly, for her human mind had fled her wilder one, she thought: _Let him die, then._

But her fur stood on end. The mere idea of abandoning him left her cold.

She was dutiful, but not stupid, and lie down to wait in the grass.

****

****

**IX.**

The sound of footsteps, running. One set: wolf. The other: human, and unfamiliar.

Samuel’s ragged form shot across the cliffs where Jeunesse had been resting. Behind him, a guard—like the ones at the blue tower—howled with rage as he chased Samuel. When the guard slashed one of his verges in front of him, bluish sparks flew, cracking across the ground and the air like lightning. 

“Don’t you think for one moment I don’t know what you are, dog! I know what you are! The Master knows what you are—”

Jeunesse barreled into the guard with all her strength, knocking him down and cutting his words short. His verge had fallen from his grip, and she took it into her mouth, pulling. The iron links chaining it to his forearm skin tore as she did, and he squealed like a small animal. Yet she kept pulling until the verge came loose, then ran towards the untended woods where Samuel had fled.

When she caught up with Samuel, she tossed the verge and bloody chain aside. A wound, branching down from the base of his tail to the top of his skull, bled lightly as Samuel panted. He was still as she approached, likely awaiting her discipline.

But Jeunesse forced herself to be happy he was alive. She forced herself to enjoy the idea that she would have to care for him forever, her packmate, her twin.

_Make joy your armor, cubs!_

At least, for Mother’s sake.

Samuel whined and collapsed. As the sun rose, as they regained their human shapes, Jeunesse tended to the wound as best she could. He cried as she held him.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** This is one of those stories that just took forever to churn out. I've probably been grinding it for three weeks on and off. Couldn't tell you why it gave me such trouble—I love Jeunesse, I love her tale, and I love werewolves. Maybe the rona's just getting to me finally.
> 
> I apologize that this one is kind of a bummer (?). Jeunesse's story is tragic at the beginning, but she has a happy ending—we just haven't really delved into it yet. I'm not a fan of shoving queer characters through tragedy for no reason. And in my defense, Jeunesse does love her brother.
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨


End file.
